Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

Tony Blair today unveiled the first fruits of his labours as Middle East peace envoy, outlining an economic deal between Israel and the Palestinians which he claimed would boost the West Bank.

The former Prime Minister said that Israel had agreed to remove trade and travel barriers for Palestinians in order to allow the territory to grow economically ahead of a final peace deal between the sides.

In particular, Mr Blair said Israel would take away four of its military checkpoints and cede increased security authority in and around the town of Jenin to make way for a business park.

Speaking at a press conference at his headquarters at the Colony Hotel, Jerusalem, the former Prime Minister said that it was vital to allow the Palestinians to develop their economic independence to free the West Bank of Israeli control and influence, while not compromising Israeli security at the same time.

The Israeli army had been reluctant to dismantle the checkpoints for fear of suicide bombers being able to infiltrate into Israel and commit attacks.

"This is a first step but it is a significant first step. It will make a marked improvement," Mr Blair said.

"For Palestinian statehood to be possible in the eyes of Palestinians, there must be hope that the occupation will, over time, be lifted. For Palestinian statehood to be possible in the eyes of Israelis, there must be hope, over time, that the security of Israel will be improved and not harmed by the way the Palestinians run their territory."

The former Prime Minister said Israel would scrap one checkpoint near the West Bank city of Hebron this week and remove or relocate three others, including one near Ramallah, which would be moved "once Israel determines the security situation so allows". Mr Blair added that the centrepiece of the economic development package would be an area in and around Jenin, which has a larger land mass than the whole of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians will be given greater control over security there to make way for a number of economic and social projects.

The former Prime Minister's plan is considered vital to Western efforts to secure a future peace deal between the Israeli government and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President and head of the moderate Fatah party, who runs the West Bank.

However James Hider, The Times's Middle East correspondent, said that, although Mr Blair deserved "credit" for brokering this agreement, its success remained fraught with problems.

"The army are very reluctant to remove these checkpoints because they are the ones who will carry the can if the bombers get through," he said. "It would only take a couple of suicide bombers, and they would go back in."

He added, however, that the move reflected the increasing faith that Israel had in Mr Abbas's security forces, which have been trained and equipped by Jordan and the United States.

Mr Blair's announcement comes as Israel and Hamas, the Islamist militant group which runs the Gaza Strip, were said to be close to agreeing to a ceasefire to stop rocket attacks aimed at Israeli towns and bloody responses by the Jewish State's military against suspected militants.

According to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, is minded to accept a truce which had been brokered by Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. Mr Suleiman met Mr Barak in Tel Aviv yesterday to outline details of the plan.

The newspaper adds that Israel's acceptance of any ceasefire would be conditional on Hamas eventually releasing the soldier Gilad Schalit, who was kidnapped by militants and has been held hostage for two years.

However, the fate of the delicate talks remained uncertain today after Israel announced that a 70-year-old woman was killed by a Qassam rocket in the town of Kibbutz Gvar'am in the Negev. The rocket is thought to have been fired by Islamic Jihad, Hamas's sister organisation, last night.

Hamas has ruled Gaza since seizing power from Fatah last summer and has been the subject of an Israeli-led blockade ever since, leaving its population poverty-stricken and isolated.

The Palestinian energy chief has given warning that Gaza will be plunged into darkness within hours unless warring factions stop fighting, as 11 more deaths were reported today, bringing the toll to 19 since Sunday.

Abdel Karim Abdeen, the head of the Palestinian Energy Authority, said that running battles by fighters loyal to both the Islamist Hamas and secular Fatah groups close to the Karni border crossing between Gaza and Israel had prevented any fuel trucks from reaching the strip's main power station for days.

"We are running out of fuel to run our generators, which supply 75 per cent of the Gaza Strip," he told the AP agency.

"If the situation remains the same and we are not able to supply the plant with fuel, we are going to shut down by 9am (tomorrow) and Gaza is going to live in darkness."

The grave warning came as the fighting between the warring factions - both of which share a place in the increasingly fragile Palestinian unity Government - showed no signs of abating, despite the second short-lived ceasefire within 24 hours.

Today, Hamas gunmen were reported to have ambushed members of the pro-Fatah Presidential Guard at a training camp near the Karni crossing with mortars, rockets and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, killing eight.

As the battle continued yards from the border, another fighter was shot dead by Israeli forces guarding the crossing. Later, a member of the President Mahmoud Abbas's security forces was reported to have been killed during a Hamas attack in the southern Gaza Strip.

In an ominous counter-development, about 500 Fatah loyalists were reported to have today entered Gaza from Egypt in a bid to back up the faction's battles against the Islamists. The forces are believed to be under the control of Muhammad Dahlan, the national security adviser to Mr Abbas.

A total of 19 Palestinians have now been killed in fighting between militants affiliated to Hamas and Fatah since Sunday, with more than 50 others wounded. The unity Government involving both parties was formed last March in order to bring to an end to a brutal round of fighting at the start of the year, mainly in the lawless Gaza Strip, which had left almost 400 dead.

The previous Government which Hamas ran on its own presided over an area suffering with growing economic hardship because of a US and EU boycott of the party. Hamas has refused to abide by the West's demands to recognise Israel's right to exist, accept previous peace agreements between Fatah-led Governments and the Jewish State, and renounce suicide bombings.

Today, Britain demanded that both sides taking part in the latest gun-battles draw back. "I am deeply concerned by the dangerous upsurge in violence between Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip, and by the number of deaths since the weekend," Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, said, in a statement.

"This fighting is senseless. It endangers civilians, makes it harder for the international community to help the people of Gaza, and undermines the peace process. It is for the legally constituted Palestinian security forces to restore order. They should do so quickly."

However, fresh calls today by Mr Abbas for the militants to cease fighting and implement a Government-backed security plan "without delay" appeared to have sounded on deaf ears.